Point Lookout
Musings from the hillside

Jordan and I are most relieved to have made it through the Radio Club Holiday Dinner. I spaced out and didn’t beg for help among all the other nonsense going on. There are a couple of annual awards and a radio raffle still hanging too. But the party went off and was, by most accounts, a great success.

Today, Jordan and I have been resting and trying to stay out of trouble’s way. It was gray and threatening for a while but it’s cleared off if still cold.

Eric was glad to see me a week later … the shortest time between haircuts either of us can remember. He is convinced a $100 bill will fit under the door if I need to just drop money off on my way by … he looked at the cut on my cheek and took a few minutes to coach me a little. I’d pretty figured out the up-and-down only concept but he added some other thoughts. A better shave this afternoon.

Off to a sort-of radio thing, the commission’s having an informal get together and Gene’s announcement as volunteer of the year hit the little paper that arrived today.

In a Freakonomics Blog entry in the NY Times, we get a collection of interesting pundit/expert quotes. Most of them have germs of ideas we can learn from. The bulk of the message is that they, the experts, are smart and the rest of us are dumb.

They are probably right but that’s not as helpful as you’d like. I suppose, in the fullness of time, one takes the critiques as guideposts but only after filtering out the unhelpful noise like criticisms of populations that live in danger areas.

This is very much stuff that talks to the foundation concepts that have woken me up to the need for action here on the local level. I resonate to some of the ideas but find the grandiosity and pomposity a bit nonproductive and annoying. However, since it’s in the Gray Lady, we all must realize that these are corporate-sponsored mouthpieces and therefore, the next step is probably to figure out whose axes they’re grinding and decide if we feel like either trusting or supporting them as voices.

Sorry to be cynical. Not very sorry but mebbe a little sorry.

Got the draft Letter of Understanding tweaked. No word on their Appendix C (the plan) but that’s not the issue. The issue is getting agreement among the cats that being herded is a good thing.

Decided to bail on the EC meeting last night. Just wasn’t up for it. Besides, the Chicken Soup for the Old Fat Guy’s soul was smelling pretty good. Forgot that the secret herb was Thyme (Mr. the Foodie had to remind me this morning.) My weight performance the past couple of weeks has been pretty sad but c’est la vie.

I guess the face is toughening up. The last shave was rushed and I still got a decent shave with no real discomfort. When I splash the bay rum on, it doesn’t sting very much any more .

We woke up to another morning of dense fog. It hung over the valley late into the morning. Taking the daily constitutional in shorts is getting harder and harder.

The weekly trip to “the farm” (where we pick up our food from the CSA) yielded a couple of mandarin oranges among more prosaic eggplant, greens, late-planted carrots, and peppers. Jordan was a gentleman to the other person picking up her stuff and we were first there at like 8:30.

The walk was uneventful. The latest bill for the printing of the radio club newsletter hit an all-time low of just under $55 … I’m not asking any stoopid questions. One more Board Meeting to run and I’m (at least temporarily) out of a volunteer job. That will be nice for a while. Classes start in January … don’t know how many or where yet.

A morning after story. The “adventure” was yesterday and a good time was had by all. There were a 10K run and hike, a summit run, and a half and full marathons on the mountain. The only one upset was Jordan, who stayed at home.

The long routes made logistics and communications complicated. The limousine (van) at the summit got up there a couple of hours early (probably forgot that the clocks moved back the night before). We had six radio teams on the hill and at least one of them could only be reached by relaying. Net Control was well up the mountain and mobile.

As usual, there were important questions from the organizers that got answered quickly. There were important updates that kept everyone at the bottom of the mountain comfortable that all was as it should be on the courses. It’s another event that can’t be covered by cell phones and really needs the safety net of radio communications.

The two memorable situations were the wheelchair racer on the 10-K course whose mountain-wheelchair’s frame broke and bib number 340 that we couldn’t account for. In spite of the rider’s assurance he could make it, we talked him into a ride the last couple of km. This was a fun-run, not a performance event and he ended up relieved for the ride. Bib 340 showed up, picked up his bib and a tee-shirt, and decided to go home. Fortunately, we got a cell phone call through to him at home before the Sheriff’s and Park District’s Search and Rescue Teams started a full blown search on the mountain (we were still well away from that, actually, but the team leaders were standing there looking professional and ready). The most serious problem was a woman on the course, not an adventure participant, just someone on the course, who fell and injured her leg. She got treated at our first aid station and trucked off to Kaiser.

All in all, another great event by Save Mount Diablo and the Mount Diablo Amateur Radio Club. Julie and her team and John Stuart of our team really did a terrific job (as did all the volunteers). I even heard KI6FYJ and KI6FYK up at aid station 3 got on the air!?

Well, the scale said exactly 200.0. It’s a fanatically accurate digital thing so it must be accurate. It just seems to refuse to let me drop below the leading 2. Sigh. Maybe tomorrow it will let go of its 2 fetish.

After a spectacular weekend here, it dropped fifteen degrees or so, stayed windy all day, and clouded over. No rain of note but threatening. There were showers all around us but nothing here.

Jordan, the village inspector, found nothing wrong and reported so to Emmanuel Ursu, Planning Director, yesterday morning. It was still warm and nice at the time. Jordan was in a fine mood as was Emmanuel to all appearances. I really must introduce myself to “The Public Works Guy” … we see him all the time and he was especially nice to Jordan yesterday. Perhaps today we will go to Peet’s for a scone then to Safeway for more Halloween supplies (I ate the last batch, weight loss notwithstanding).

Nothing from Nihola (the other Dutch cargo bike manufacturer who claims global shipping). Nihola is pointed to from Cycle Chic, a very clever and attractive bike-hype blog. So is Christiania which doesn’t catch my fancy quite so strongly. Sad that Nihola hasn’t replied.. I don’t know if it is cheaper than the Bakfiets branded bike available in Portland from those lovely people at Clever Cycles. I like the two-wheel Bakfiets look but the Nihola tricycle is worth a look. Neither is very practical here with my cliff but the idea just tickles me.

Jim Tiemstra sent the Oakland radio docs so we’re a step closer. K6ORI.com is registered but the home page is empty … gotta do something about that later today.

Pacificon is over for 2007. The post-mortem will be held in a couple of weeks but it’s all over but the paperwork.

We had at least 15% more people attend, maybe 20%. All reports from vendors and the hotel confirm that. Our primary co-conspirator in this, Ham Radio Outlet or HRO, saw that kind of increase in sales. It was terrific.

Of course, that meant the forums (lectures) were 15 - 20% more over crowded and the hallways and exhibit hall were 15 - 20% more crowded. But that’s OK. The one-day license class was as successful as ever. Testing went swimmingly and our 85 year old who struggled with the class passed finally. She went home with a very nice shiny new radio.

The ARRL arranged for Dan Henderson, their rep to the DOD in this PAVE/PAWS saga. Dan’s a good guy with a tough assignment. He spoke three times to packed and vocal rooms and did as good a job as can be done under the circumstances. We tried real hard not to shoot the messenger …

It was interesting. With the increase in attendees we didn’t see a dramatic shift in demographics. It’s like there were just more hams coming out. We didn’t see an obvious drop in age level or change in any other visible change in the mix. But it was lovely to see folks turn out and have a good time.

Meanwhile, there were numerous valuable informal meetings and discussions. The Northern California Cactus Radio Association’s East Bay Hills conundrum looks to be solved (along with some other “challenges”). The same may be true for some of MDARC’s “challenges”. The new wave of emergency radio teams seems to be gelling (we’re somewhere between water and soft jello at this point). It was all good.

turns into another quarter of an inch during prime walk-time.

Under 203 again this morning. It’s drying out a little. maybe I can get the bike on the trainer for a bit this afternoon. Funny twinges in left knee and lower back but I’m not convinced they matter.

Got the Pacificon banner to the sign guys … sigh. Another $100 to the cause

The Corporate Media loves Al Sharpton and, to a lesser degree, Jesse Jackson. You can always count on them to rise up out of their fat-cat existences when some public figure says something unseemly about the US African American community (that’s an OK thing to say, right?). And the media makes sure there are microphones, cameras, lights, and reporters nearby at all times in case there’s a juicy bit of ranting to capture and splash onto the Editorial space in between the ads selling soap.

Apparently, it’s good for business.

It’s pretty bad theater. The Reverend Al and Mr. Jackson should spend some time with their constituents. They should spend some time listening to the poetry of their community, and it’s popular music. They should meditate on the heroes raised out of that community and thrust by their fan club (the global media transnationals) on the world stage as performers or characters.

In fact, they should go sit in the stands at one of those Rutgers woman’s basketball games. They should get recordings of the speech among the players. They should further listen to the speech on the court of the professional game, the role models for the up and coming in the sport.

Neither of these pompous, self-important, hypocrits has a clue. Neither of them is qualified to speak for a community. Their outrage is as much against those they claim to represent (and don’t) as against Mr. Imus, an urepentantly vulgar and insensitive person who has made his employers many millions of dollars in profits and who has a larger and more loyal following, one suspects, than either Reverend Sharpton or Mr. Jackson.

Remember, this is the same Reverend Al Sharpton who was one of the three folks made to pay $345,000 in damages in findings of slander in the entirely bogus Tawana Brawley case in the early 1970s. I have never figured out how anyone would believe a word out of his mouth after that one.

Poor Don Imus, 66 and out of work. I’m sure someone wants to tap into the millions more to be garnered for putting him back to work somewhere, running his mouth off to the great joy of his fans.

The problem is that that whole thing plays into the hands of those who are happily abridging our rights of free speech. There will now be a chill in the air when a white guy of any age wants to use the words of the non-white community on the air. The specter of the Reverends rising from their gilded couches and from among their rich white supporters to put on the robes of sanctimony will linger in our subconsciousness.

One can only hope that CBS and NBC miss their revenue targets and that Imux gets picked up, again, for even more than they were paying him.

And I don’t like him or his show.

Well, Pacificon was a real launch-pad for Icom’s D-Star here in the Bay Area. Tim Barrett, co-founder of K6MDD, the Mount Diablo Digital repeater system, spoke twice to packed rooms. HRO sold a boatload of D-Star radios. There was a D-Star love-in on the air yesterday and today.

There will be around 20 new operators in the Bay area. Most of them are experienced operators and will come up to speed quickly. D-Star may get heavier use than our mostly dead FM repeaters. It would be an improvement, if you like what these people tend to talk about.

It’s all good. D-Star is a product of the Japanese government working with one hardware vendor. The details of the protocol are not easy to get and parts of the system are still shrouded in mystery. Icom has just gotten initial backbone linking gear and isn’t really sure what they have yet. Icom America is already talking about the possibility that the US will need to develop its own backbone technology because the 10GHz microwave gear Japan chose is pretty expensive and not very easy to install and use.

This is what you get when you let the Japanese Amateur Radio League (a department of the Japanese governments communications department unlike our non-governmental organization here in the US) and a vendor design something for “the amateurs”. They went off into a dark room and designed something without input from other markets, particularly the US or Europe where things are really different than Japan. Now they’re pushing a rope uphill in the countries where real product volumes would come from. And they needed advice. As good as D-Star is, it could have been a ton better.

Maybe we need to pick up a couple of Matt Ettus’s Universal Software Radio Peripheral kits and start designing our own. It wouldn’t take half as long and we could probably get prototypes running all over the states in short order … in our copious spare time.